CUNY’s new chancellor is living large in a 3,000-square-foot Manhattan apartment that is bigger than the average American home.

James Milliken, who took the helm of the public university system last week, is settling into a sprawling rental with four bedrooms, 4¹/₂ bathrooms, a formal dining room and a terrace.

The 25th-floor unit is located in the same tony East 68th Street building that is home to former Mayor David Dinkins, former Fire Commissioner Thomas Van Essen and Howard Safir, who headed both the FDNY and NYPD.

CUNY is paying $18,000 a month for the apartment, rent that will rise to $19,500 a month in May 2015, according to the two-year lease obtained by The Post.

“It’s an outrage,” a Brooklyn College professor said of Milliken’s lavish digs. “CUNY has no problem wasting money on administrators. It’s part of the administrative bloat. But they don’t spend money on faculty. Our salaries have been frozen for four years.”

Milliken, who was previously president of the University of Nebraska, is required by CUNY to live in the home and to hold university functions there.

The lease for the property is with CUNY’s Research Foundation, an affiliated nonprofit that funds research and acquires facilities. The money for the housing is coming from a $3.4 million windfall CUNY got when it sold a previous chancellor’s residence on the Upper East Side.

The 33-story white brick rental building at 215 E. 68th St. is owned by Rudin Management, which was known to offer rent-stabilized units or rental deals to prominent New Yorkers.

Also living in the building are Hazel Dukes, New York president of the NAACP, and several retired judges.
Additional reporting by Susan Edelman